Beauties: Hockey's Greatest Untold Stories

By James Duthie and Roberto Loungo

Fifty-seven incredible stories from hockey’s biggest names, greatest characters and unsung heroes

Essential reading for every fan, Beauties is a collection of the best stories that players tell each other. Grab a seat with TSN’s James Duthie as hockey’s finest relive highs, lows and hilarious moments on and off the ice from superstars, journeymen, coaches, referees, broadcasters, agents, and hockey moms and dads. In Beauties, you’ll find out:

·       How Sidney Crosby’s most unusual nickname came to be

·       How Steve Stamkos’s dad accidentally stole Steve Yzerman’s car

·       How Paul “Biznasty” Bissonette almost had the Arizona Coyotes kicked out of a Winnipeg hotel on game day

·       How Wayne Gretzky’s greatest one-liner may have turned around the          Stanley Cup Final in 1985

·       About the night that Hayley Wickenheiser went blind

·       Why the St. Louis Blues credit Laila Anderson, a brave young girl, for their    Stanley Cup win

·       What Bobby Orr said the first time he saw Connor McDavid play at a rink in Toronto

And more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781443460767

James Duthie

JAMES DUTHIE covers hockey as well as the Grey Cup, Super Bowl and the Masters on TSN. Duthie’s entertaining and sharp-witted style make him a fan favourite across Canada and one of the most-followed media personalities on Twitter. His natural charisma and extensive history in sports broadcasting allow him exclusive interviews with some of the biggest stars in sports and entertainment. Duthie’s work has earned him multiple awards, including seven Canadian Screen Awards and the Excellence in Sports Broadcasting award from Sports Media Canada. He is the author of The Day I (Almost) Killed Two Gretzkys and The Guy on the Left. James Duthie lives in Aurora, Ontario.

Book preview

Introduction

Here’s how the book’s first interview goes.

One morning, I’m lying on my couch in my underwear (too much already?), eating a bowl of oatmeal, watching SportsCentre, when my phone rings.

Hey, James. Bobby Orr. You have a few minutes now?

Uhhh . . . of course, Bobby . . . Mr. Orr . . . just give me one second.

I’d emailed Bobby about doing a story for the book the night before, expecting it might take a few weeks or months for the greatest defenceman ever to get back to me. It’s taken 10 hours—three, if you don’t count sleep. I sprint towards the kitchen, where my wife—wonderful . . . loving . . . beautiful . . . zero sense of urgency—is on the phone with some trendy clothing store, trying to buy a gift for our daughter.

I need her phone, like now. I’m an idiot when it comes to technology, so the only way I’ve figured out how to record phone interviews for the book is to talk to the subject with my speaker on, and record to the voice memo folder on my wife’s phone. (I know. There are better ways. I’ve found them since. But Orr’s call comes early in the process. This is all I’ve got.)

I come sliding across the hardwood, full Joel-in-Risky Business, half-whispering, half-gesturing to indicate my desperation. Babe, it’s Bobby Orr! (Miming a shot with a pretend hockey stick.) For my book! (Drawing a square with fingers.) I need your phone! (Pointing at the phone with one hand, putting the other hand to my ear to indicate . . . phone.)

She gives me a casual get lost wave.

Desperate, I resort to my outside voice, my hand covering my phone. "It’s Bobby freakin’ Orr!!! I need your phone NOW!"

She rolls her eyes and talks on. Now I’m throwing everything at her. Gesticulating wildly at my phone, and then hers. Making loud wounded-animal noises. Mandated-round-the-clock-supervision-type behaviour.

Finally, she gives. I’ll have to call you back, she says with a sigh. My husband is having a seizure.

I grab her phone and bolt back to my office.

Bobby, you still there? He is, thankfully. So, so sorry about that . . . okay . . . just give me one more sec . . . annnddd . . . we’re recording. So. Tell me a great hockey story.

Thankfully, the rest of the interviews for the book are less sitcom-ish. But they all start with that same basic request: Tell me a great hockey story.

There are no other rules. Long. Short. Funny. Serious. Inspirational. It could be the greatest game of your career. It could be the worst. It might be the funniest moment you’ve ever seen on the ice. Or in the bar after.

Some shared one story. Some shared a few. You will hear from current NHL superstars, Hall of Famers, journeymen, minor leaguers, coaches, refs, broadcasters, agents, trainers, hockey moms and dads, fans—everyone in the game.

Don’t try to make sense of the list of storytellers. I prefer randomness. In real life, you run into someone at the rink, the airport . . . the bar. And they say, You gotta hear this one.

I started with my friends at TSN—the former players and Insiders I work with daily. My favourite part of nearly two decades on the hockey panel is getting to sit beside characters who spin endless tales. Broadcasters are generally great storytellers. (It’s kind of our job.)

Then I called people I’ve gotten to know in the game—Roberto Luongo, Jordan Eberle, Steven Stamkos—good guys with good tales. Your story tree grows from there. Stamkos says, You should talk to Teddy Purcell. Kelly Chase says, Call Jim McKenzie and Garth Butcher—they are gold. Jon Cooper says, You need Eric Neilson in this book!

And of course, you talk to the greats. Orr, Gretz, Sid, McDavid . . . they are all here.

An apology to all my journalism profs who demanded multiple sources for every story. I will break that rule, intentionally, many times in this book. Stories are personal. I want you to feel like you are sharing a beer or a coffee with the storyteller. When a chapter needs more voices, you will hear them.

I always hear how hockey players are boring. And maybe in those keep workin’ hard, get pucks in deep intermission interviews, they mostly are. (By the way, they really do want to get pucks in deep. Their coach just yelled it in their ears for the last 20 minutes. It’s ingrained.)

But turn the cameras off and get them away from that sweaty, out-of-breath, towel-around-the-neck, cliché-filled environment, and hockey players usually have a ton of stories. The game is full of characters.

Enjoy their stories. They were a pleasure to write.

Darryl

Sidney Crosby and His Wild Junior Hockey Roommate, Eric Neilson

Holy shit! Eric Neilson says from his seat in the stands. This kid is insane!

It’s September 2003. The Rimouski Océanic of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (the Q) are playing their first preseason game at home against Baie-Comeau. Neilson and some other Océanic vets have the night off, and they sit together in the stands, watching 16-year-old Sidney Crosby make magic in his first junior appearance. By the third period, the phenom from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, has four goals and four assists.

It’s a man against boys, Neilson says about the boy, who is playing against several men. "At that time, his nicknames are Sid the Kid, the Swayner, the Next One . . . really stupid nicknames. So, as a group of veterans—me, Mark Tobin, Érick Tremblay, Danny Stewart—we figure we have to come up with a new nickname for this guy.

"With about five minutes left in the game, Mark says to me, ‘Neily, who is that Toronto Maple Leafs captain who got 10 points in a game?’ And I go, ‘That’s Darryl Sittler.’ So Mark says, ‘Let’s call him Darryl!’

After the game, we go into the room and we’re all saying, ‘Hey, Darryl! Great game, Darryl! Way to go, Darryl!’ And he’s like, ‘Why are you guys calling me Darryl?’ We won’t tell him. ‘You’re a rookie. You don’t get to know where your nickname comes from!’

I’m pretty happy with that nickname, Crosby (Darryl) laughs. For a 16-year-old rookie in junior, I’m sure they could have come up with much worse.

The next day, the vets take white tape and a black marker and write DARRYL over CROSBY on everything that bears his name—his locker nameplate, his sticks, his flip-flops . . . everywhere: 87 DARRYL.

A couple of media outlets eventually get wind of the story, and it gets back to the original Darryl, Sittler. When Crosby returns from the World Juniors in January, there is a package waiting from Ontario. It is a framed photo of Sittler and his 10-point-game scoresheet, signed by Darryl: To Darryl.

Neilson almost never got to be Darryl’s teammate. The season before Crosby’s arrival, 2002–03, Rimouski is the worst junior team in Canada. And Neilson spirals.

I just go off track, he says. "The partying, the girls, the missed curfews. I’m an assistant captain, and the team gives me multiple chances. Finally, they call me into the office just before Christmas, and they have a one-way bus ticket back to Freddy [Fredericton, Neilson’s hometown]. They say, ‘You’re off the team. You are not the player we thought you were when we brought you here.’

It’s like an instant epiphany for me. I have this flashback of being back home, working for my dad—Neilson’s Heating and Ventilation—doing heat pumps and ductwork. Then I have another flashback to being a young hockey player, going to the gym and being the first one there, sacrificing everything to make it to the Quebec League. And it’s like an instant 180. I rip the bus ticket up, throw it on the ground, and say, ‘Boys, give me one more chance!’ Everybody says no, except assistant coach Donald Dufresne. He says, ‘All right, but this is it. You have one more chance, and then you’re done.’

For the rest of the season, Neilson works harder than he ever has, stays out of trouble and earns back the trust of the Océanic brass. The team finishes dead last, winning just 11 games, but he’s saved his career. He gets called back into the team office.

"They say, ‘We’re going to draft this kid from Nova Scotia. You’ve shown us the kind of player and person you can be, and we want you to be his roommate and mentor him. Is that something you’d want to do?’

I go, ‘Yeah, sure, who is it?’ They say, ‘Sidney Crosby.’ And I go, ‘Who is that?’ I’d never heard of Sidney Crosby.

Their first night as teammates/housemates doesn’t go well.

Crosby and their billets pick up Neilson at the bus station. He walks off the bus, best mushroom cut I’ve ever seen, full of energy, and I could just tell right away he’s a great guy to be around, Crosby says. "Then, that night, he says, ‘Make sure you open my window tonight.’ We have bedrooms next to each other in our billet’s basement. He tells me he is going to wait to make sure there isn’t a curfew call, and then sneak out. He needs his window open to get back in. Of course, I fall asleep and forget. I wake up at 3 a.m. to this banging and crashing. But I don’t know what it is, so I fall back asleep.

In the morning, I open his bedroom door and it’s just freezing. His window is demolished! I wake him up, he rolls over, and he’s so mad at me. So we don’t get off to the best start.

Luckily, it’s easy to forgive a guy who is about to turn your franchise around. Eric and Crosby quickly become best buds. A local Mazda dealership gives them a sponsor car. Crosby doesn’t have his licence yet, so the dealership puts his name and number on the passenger-side door: 87 CROSBY. And on the driver’s side, NEILSON 29.

"It’s Driving Miss Daisy! Neilson laughs. I’m his personal chauffeur. Everywhere Darryl needs to go, I take him. I try to teach him how to drive in the local parking lots. He’s a horrible driver. Can’t handle a stick. Irony! Still a way better hockey player than he is a driver."

These are golden days for the boys. With Crosby, the Océanic go from the basement to instant contender. And Neilson has a driver’s-side view of the future of hockey. But one night he almost blows that last chance the Océanic have given him.

We’re out late after a game, he says. "I’m the driver. I’m taking a couple of drunk teammates home and there are two girls in the back. I’m showing off. Coming around a corner, I try to do this e-brake Tokyo Drift thing, and I lose control. Now I’m doing donuts on the streets of Rimouski at 2 a.m. I hit the curb, bounce over it, hit three street signs and land in the other lane, facing the wrong way.

My heart is in my throat because I know I’ve messed up. The police officer shows up, and one of the girls in my car is talking to him. Finally, he comes up and says, ‘I know it was a mistake. I’ll make sure you don’t get in any trouble. I just need one favour: I want two autographed Crosby cards.’

Done, Neilson says before the officer finishes the sentence. A tow truck takes away the Mazda, and the police officer drives Neilson back to his billet’s house.

I run into Darryl’s room, grab the cards and a marker from his desk, and shake him awake, Neilson says. "Now, Darryl is a real heavy sleeper, he’s hard to wake up, and he doesn’t remember much when you do wake him up from his beauty sleep. I manage to semi-revive him and I’m like, ‘Darryl, you gotta sign these cards!’ He scribbles his name, half-asleep. I go give them to the cop, and it’s done.

The next morning, Darryl comes down for breakfast and he’s got marker ink all over his face and his chest . . . everywhere! He kept the marker in his hand as he went back to sleep. And I’m like, ‘Darryl, you better go look in the mirror!’ He thinks we pranked him.

I just figure they wrote all over me while I was sleeping, Crosby says. Then he tells me the whole story. Interesting way to wake up. Car is totalled and I’m covered in marker.

He’s pretty mad when I tell him the real story, Neilson says. I don’t think he usually gives autographs to cops to keep idiot teammates out of trouble.

So, it is true what they say: Sidney Crosby can make brilliant plays in his sleep.

For the next two years, Darryl rides shotgun in Neilson’s (repaired) Mazda, and Neilson and the Océanic ride shotgun to Darryl’s brilliance on the ice. He puts up 350 points in 143 games and leads Rimouski to the 2005 Quebec League championship.

The next fall, Crosby is off to Pittsburgh, to Stanley Cups and Harts and Golden Goals and one of the greatest careers in hockey history. And Neilson, his old roomie and driver, is off on a 12-year odyssey through the desert and jungle of the minors.

Mike Angelidis, my old captain in Norfolk and Syracuse, used to say, ‘East Coast Hockey League: Easy Come, Hard to Leave’—that’s the desert. Then you get the call and you make it to the second three-letter league, the American Hockey League—that’s the jungle. ’Cause you never know what’s going to happen in the jungle! Then, just maybe you might get called up to the first three-letter league: the NHL. We call that paradise! You go from eating chicken fingers and pizza on a Greyhound bus for eight hours to flying around in a super turbojet, having the filet mignon or sea bass with red or white wine.

Neilson never makes it to paradise. He becomes a journeyman enforcer, mostly in the jungle. But he takes great joy, and a mentor’s pride, in watching Crosby become a superstar. The two remain close friends.

Crosby writes DARRYL on his gloves his entire first season in Pittsburgh. At season’s end, he gives Neilson, and each of the three other Rimouski vets who nicknamed him, a set of the gloves.

To this day, Neilson refuses to say the names Sidney or Crosby. Sid is Darryl. Darryl only. Darryl forever.

And there is one more night, playing with the Norfolk Admirals in the jungle, that Neilson could have really used his old roomie.

It’s 2011. The Admirals’ team Halloween party at a local bar.

I call Halloween a holiday. It’s my favourite night of the year, Neilson says. "I always put a ton of effort into my costume. So that year, I have really long hair and I’d recently watched the movie Blow with Johnny Depp. It’s about the drug dealer George Jung, back in the ’70s. So I figure I can pull that off. I wear the white turtleneck, white suit, white shoes, sunglasses. I go see a professional hairdresser. She does my hair and makeup just perfect. I am George Jung! But I have to have props, right? So I have a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill, a bag of icing sugar for the cocaine, a bag of green tea for the pot, a makeup mirror to do fake snorting, and two fake rolled-up joints with green tea on the inside. I’m buzzing around all night, jokingly asking people if they want a bump. I’m totally in character. Just a great night.

"There’s a scene in the movie where Johnny Depp gets arrested outside his parents’ house. So I’ve had a few drinks, and at the end of the night, as I’m leaving, I joke to the manager of the bar, ‘You want a bump before I go?’ He grabs me and my bag of icing sugar and pulls me outside the bar. This is Halloween night on Granby Street in Norfolk, so there are cops patrolling up and down the street. The manager pulls me over to a cop and says, ‘This guy is doing coke in my bar!’ And the cop grabs the bag of sugar and says, ‘What is this?’

"In the state I’m in, I think everyone is just playing along with my character. The manager and cop must know some of my buddies on the team, and now we’re just recreating the arrest scene from the movie! They’re all part of the skit! So I yell at the cop in my best Johnny-Depp-as-George-Jung voice, ‘What da fawk you think it is, man? It’s cocaine!’ And he starts putting me in the cop car. I see all the other players standing around, watching, so I stay in character, yelling, ‘YOU CAN’T TOUCH ME! I’M THE BEST FAWKING DRUG DEALER THERE IS!’

"Now I’m in the back of the car, and the cop gets in. I go, ‘That was awesome, man. Thanks for playing along!’ And he says, ‘What are you talking about? You’re under arrest for cocaine possession! You’re going to jail.’ That’s when I realize, ‘Oh, shit.’

He takes my New Brunswick ID, and he’s saying, ‘This is a fake ID! Where did you get all this cocaine?’ I’m desperately trying to explain that I’m a Norfolk Admirals player and this is a Halloween costume. But he isn’t buying it. I sit for 45 minutes in the back of the car before the drug unit guys come down and test my bag of cocaine positive for icing sugar. Finally, they let me go. Just another night in the jungle.

Should have called Darryl. And asked for more autographed cards.

The Great One-Liner

The Joke That Leads to Wayne Gretzky’s Greatest Cup Final

The most underappreciated part of Wayne Gretzky’s game was his ability to finish.

A joke, I mean.

One afternoon, Darren Pang, former NHL goalie turned broadcaster, is out golfing with his long-time pal at Sherwood Country Club in California, where Gretzky lives at the time.

We’re on the tee box of this really long par five, unreachable, says Pang. "And Gretz says, ‘I bet you I can get home in two.’ I take the bet, because Gretz is a good golfer, but he has zero chance of getting on that green in two shots. So, he hits a nice drive in the fairway. But he’s still got a mile to the green. No chance. So, Gretz walks up to his ball, takes a long look at the green—and pulls a wedge out! I’m thinking, ‘What is he doing?’ And he casually turns to his left and hits the ball into his backyard. ‘Home in two!’ he says with this big grin.

"Another day, another round. The Great One drains a 60-foot putt for birdie. Without missing a beat, he says casually, ‘You gotta earn your nickname.’

We all just crack up, Pang says. He’s not being cocky. He just does it to give the guys a laugh.

Timing is everything in comedy. And considering the timing, the stakes and what would happen next, Gretzky’s greatest one-liner comes in the 1985 Stanley Cup final.

The series does not start well for the favoured Oilers. The defending Cup champs lose Game 1 to the Philadelphia Flyers, 4–1. Gretzky goes pointless and is a minus-2.

Glen Sather really gives it to me in the dressing room after, Gretzky says. Myself and Paul Coffey are the ones who get singled out for not being ready to play. And he just rips us. Everyone thought the Oilers were going to win in four or five, and that first game really could have been 8–1 if not for Grant Fuhr. I just didn’t show up for the game. And when you play that way, you deserve it. But the next day, Sather’s really positive, building us back up. So by the time Game 2 starts, we are ready to play.

Early in Game 2, the Oilers are killing a penalty when Gretzky tries to freeze a puck in the Flyers zone. Forward Rick Tocchet is all over him. We’ll let them handle the play-by-play:

GRETZKY: In those days, it takes a long time to get a whistle freezing the puck. You have to hold it a while. We end up with seven or eight guys in the same corner while I’m trying to freeze it. Now, that’s the year Clarkie [Flyers GM Bob Clarke] makes the Flyers all wear these giant shoulder pads. They were already a big team, but those made them look huge. So they’re all around me, and Tocchet is just hacking and whacking me. Everything you can imagine that is semi-legal to do.

TOCCHET: Mike Keenan says to me before the series, You have to go after Gretzky. Do whatever you can to get under his skin. I think he used a little harsher language than that. So I’m cross-checking him, face-washing, you name it.

GRETZKY: Finally, thankfully, the whistle goes. I turn to Tocchet and say, Hey, relax. Lighten up! And he looks me in the eye and says . . .

TOCCHET: Get used to it! You are getting this every shift! Every period! All seven games long!

GRETZKY: So I look at him and say, I don’t know what series you’re playing in, because I’m only playing four more games.

Boom! A verbal sucker punch.

TOCCHET: Everyone just stops for a second or two after he says it. And then they all start laughing. Even the guys on my team! I’m not sure what to do. I have no response. I think I just kind of smirk. I have to admit it’s pretty funny.

GRETZKY: Everyone leaves the corner laughing. We get back to the bench and all the guys are saying, What was so funny down there? They thought someone let one go in the corner.

Can a great chirp actually turn a series? Well, from that moment on, the Great One goes off. Minutes after the Oilers kill the penalty, Coffey feeds Gretzky to open the scoring. The Oilers go on to win, 3–1, to even the series.

In Game 3, Gretzky scores 1:10 in. Fifteen seconds later, he scores again. Ten minutes into the game, he completes the hat trick. He finishes with four points in a 4–3 win.

All three of his goals are scored with each team having a player in the penalty box, which infuriates Keenan, Clarke and the Flyers. It leads to the Gretzky Rule.

That game, those three goals, end four-on-four hockey in the NHL, Gretzky says. Every time we get a four-on-four in that series, we seem to score. Keenan says afterwards that we were purposely taking penalties to play four on four, which is crazy. But because of that playoff, the league dropped it—for seven years! Coincidental minors were now five-on-five, which was just stupid.

Four-on-four, five-on-five . . . it doesn’t matter by this point in the series. Philly can’t stop 99. Game 4, their last real hope, is tied 3–3 midway through the second when Gretzky scores two straight to win it, 5–3.

Now he’s turned Tocchet’s words back against him. He is killing the Flyers every shift . . . every period.

In the clincher, Gretzky goes full legend: a goal and three assists in an 8–3 win. Game. Series. Cup.

In the three and three-quarters games since he punchlined Tocchet in the corner, Gretzky has scored seven times and added four assists, and he wins the Conn Smythe Trophy running away.

That first loss woke us up . . . woke me up, he says.

Sure, that joke in Game 2 was funny, Tocchet says. But the problem is, damn, he was right!

The Flyers and Oilers develop a fierce rivalry over the next few years, meeting again in the Cup final in 1987, with Edmonton winning in seven games. Three months later, Keenan is chosen to coach the Canada Cup team. He assigns Tocchet to room with Gretzky.

I’m really nervous, Tocchet says. I remember calling my parents right away to tell them, ‘I’m rooming with Wayne freakin’ Gretzky!’ But right away, he just accepts me and we start hanging out. He’s dating Janet Jones secretly at the time. She comes into the room, and he tells me, ‘Don’t say anything about this.’ I think it’s pretty cool that he trusts me with the secret.

A couple of days later, Gretzky tells his roomie he’s going to get a haircut.

He doesn’t ask me if I want to come, but he just kind of stands there, waiting, Tocchet says. I realize he’s asking me to come without asking me. So I go, and after five minutes, there’s about 100 people outside the salon. I quickly learn that’s his life, every day, everywhere he goes. I finally figure out that he just doesn’t want to go out alone.

The two become close friends. They still are. When I call Tocchet for this story, he’s having dinner with Gretzky that night.

And as for the chirp that, just maybe, changed a series?

I still bring it up to him once in a while, Gretzky says. We always laugh about it. But I laugh a little harder. He still doesn’t find it quite as funny as I do.

Fixing Razor

Ray Emery and the Trainer Who Helped Pull Off One of Hockey’s Greatest Comebacks

Google Ray Emery’s name, and every story that pops up is about the way he died.

What happened to Ray Emery on the night he tragically drowned?

Sadly fitting that Ray Emery’s tragic death at 35 comes under a shroud of mystery.

Police believe Ray Emery’s death was a ‘case of misadventure.’

This story is not about the end of Ray’s life. This is the other Ray Emery tale—of one of the greatest comebacks in hockey history. And of the man who pushed him every excruciating step of the way.

* * *

The goalie and the trainer are both hurting when they find each other.

Matt Nichol’s hurt comes from being called into a meeting with Brian Burke and Dave Nonis in the spring of 2009 and being told he is no longer the Toronto Maple Leafs’ strength coach.

It had never been my goal to do that job, Matt says. I had never played hockey, so it wasn’t even on my radar. But once I got it, I poured my heart and soul into it. So that was the hard part, getting fired from something I had given myself completely to for seven years. Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, I have no plan. When the season starts, my clients are gone. I literally have zero clients, and no idea what to do with my life.

For Ray Emery, the hurt is mostly physical. It comes from a hip injury that, in all likelihood, will end his hockey career. He’d been a rising star in goal with the Ottawa Senators, helping them reach the Stanley Cup final in 2007, just his second full season in the NHL. But then his career went sideways. Then backwards. Then stopped. He admitted to some bad decisions off the ice, but also believed he didn’t deserve the bad-boy reputation that shadowed him. And then all of that became secondary.

Ray develops a condition called avascular necrosis—the head of his femur is disintegrating within his hip socket. For you and me, the fix is a hip replacement. But you can’t play goal in the NHL on an artificial hip. So Ray is done.

Wait. Maybe, just maybe, there is one Hail Mary left. An experimental new surgery has been developed at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. They will take a chunk of Ray’s fibula and use it as a drill

Reviews for Beauties

[Brian Hayden · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Entertaining read! Duthie puts together a great collection of interesting stories.

[lamour_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Duthie continues in this book his usual style of collecting sport anecdotes which frequently contain humour. In this volume the stories centre around hockey and the many outrageous funny characters who inhabit the sport. Some of the players are familiar such as Mario Lemieux and Sid Crosby. There also lesser known individuals who had their brief moment of fame because they scored important goals in important games.Because Duthie is a presenter on TV sports, we have stories from the playing career of some of men and women who work with him on those channels. It is fun to learn about the active hockey background of hockey analysts such as Bob McKenzie, Craig Button, Ray Ferraro and Mike Johnson.There are the essays about serious issues such as children dying of incurable diseases. Thus the names Laila Anderson and Jonathan Pitre appear with the affect they had on the hockey players who came in contact with them and what hockey meant to them.While not writing great literature, Duthie does a great job of presenting our hockey heroes as funny people who in most cases display great charity to their fellow human beings. Some years ago, I managed teenage boy hockey teams. The antics by those young hockey players in those dressing rooms years ago matched those described in this book.